The official position of the U.S. on coca cultivation is that as the raw ingredient in cocaine, coca must be eradicated in order to stem the tide of cocaine flowing into the United States. While technically the raw ingredient, the coca leaf only contains between 0.2 and 1.2% of the cocaine alkaloid. As has been admitted by U.S. officials, cocaine produced in Bolivia is actually smuggled into Europe. Any efforts poured into inhibiting the Bolivian coca industry by the American D.E.A. have no quantifiable effect on the quantity of cocaine crossing over U.S. borders.

In 2008, Evo Morales expelled the American ambassador and DEA agents who, according to Morales, “carried out espionage [and] financed rogue groups with the intention of taking the lives of [Bolivian government] officials, though not the President’s.” While these accusations were never substantiated by Morales or his office, they are not the sole reason for the DEA’s expulsion.

As stated earlier, most of Bolivia’s cocaine production is smuggled into European countries while Columbia’s product winds up in the United States. Regardless, in 2008 Bolivia was disqualified from $150 million in tax-free trade with the United States based on its inability to control coca production and therefore failure to comply with its drug treaty obligations. This is despite the fact that in the same year Columbia’s coca production rose 26% – compared to Bolivia’s 5% – without seeing its name added to the blacklist.

Showing that he stands behind his words, Morales brought and chewed coca leaves at a U.N assembly in Austria in 2009. He used the leaves to augment his hunger strike that same year. Coca is a traditional Andean plant used to treat hunger pains and provide energy for long days of labor as well as combat altitude sickness and stomach ailments.

Coca is non-addictive and has no adverse effects on the human body when chewed or ingested through tea. The U.S. State Department actually recommends coca tea for Americans traveling in Bolivia and suffering from altitude related sicknesses – they are, of course, cautioned against carrying the leaves or tea back into the United States, where they are illegal.

Prior to Morales’ rise to office, the Bolivian government allowed local drug prosecutors to accept bonuses directly from the U.S. embassy. These bonuses – obviously – led to higher arrest statistics and therefore satisfied Washington. Upon taking office, however, Morales suspended these bonuses.

American oil-tycoons have, until relatively recently, enjoyed a river of money flowing from Bolivia’s rich oil deposits. Before 2006, when Morales was elected President, Enron owned Bolivia’s oil pipelines and the international oil companies (Exxon, Repsol, British Gas, and Petrobas) enjoyed uninhibited black gold.

During the 1990’s export taxes on oil dropped from 50% to 18%, making Bolivia – a country with the second-largest gas reserves in South America – a veritable cash cow for countries which exported the now nationalized hydrocarbons: United States, Spain, United Kingdom, and Brazil. Following through on his campaign promises, Morales, leader of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party, nationalized Bolivia’s oil in 2006, shortly after taking office.

Morales’ campaign towards socialism through his political party, the MAS, does not come as a surprise, but rather was the basis on which he ran his campaign. Since taking office he has repeatedly spoken out against the “imperialist” American government, making his first two presidential appearances in Caracas and Havana in order to announce Bolivia’s formation of an “anti-imperialist” front with Venezuela and Cuba.

In 2006, when Morales took office, Bolivia had the most uneven distribution in wealth in Latin America – the richest 20% of the population had an income 41 times greater than the poorest 20% and 75% of the population was surviving on less than $2 per day. Redistribution of wealth is, among other things, a key goal for the Morales administration.

The MAS’s movement toward socialism is an intentionally slow one. According to Morales’ 2006 running mate for the vice-presidency: “[A socialist government] is not viable because you don’t build socialism on the basis of a family economy, you build it on the basis of industry, which there is none in Bolivia.” Basically for Morales and the MAS, socialism is a long term goal, not viable for at least fifty years; industry is the short-term goal of Bolivia.

In 2009, Bolivia recognized a new constitution, courtesy of the Morales administration and an overwhelming acceptance by the people. This new constitution increased the rights afforded Bolivia’s native population, limited land ownership to 5,000 (12,400 acres) or 10,000 hectares, and eliminated the single term limit for the office of the presidency (thus allowing Morales to secure a second term). Supporters of the new constitution argue that it limits the “white” majority’s ability to control the indigenous majority; the constitution also holds provisions to improve Bolivia’s human rights. Opposition groups largely include those of European descent living in the gas-rich eastern lowlands.

Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, certainly doesn’t fit the mold of the typical politician. He wears cheap sweaters instead of prestigious suits, he comes from a background of coca farming, has taken part in numerous hunger strikes (as the leader of a coca-workers’ union and as the president of Bolivia), and has seemingly little concern for the consequences of accusations against the United States. He has, on a variety of occasions, accused the U.S. and/or specific officials of conspiring against him and his office, of conspiring to incite violence in Bolivia, and of conspiring to plant narcotics on his presidential plane in an effort to discredit and detain him.

Morales’ moves benefit the majority of Bolivia’s population in the face of American imperialism, something virtually unprecedented in the recent history of U.S. international relations. Objectively, can we fault Morales for putting his people ahead of our own socio-economic problems and agendas?

Saludos,

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The first volunteers, in 1962, worked in public health, agriculture, and community development, mostly in rural communities. After only seven years, in 1969, a popular film, Yawar Mallku (Blood of the Condor) convinced many Bolivians that Peace Corps volunteers were sterilizing indigenous women. The film’s director, Jorge Sanjinés, denied intending to present fiction as fact, but the damage had been done. Relations between Bolivia and the United States started deteriorating and in 1971 the Peace Corps was expelled from Bolivia.

The Peace Corps didn’t return to Bolivia until 1990, this time with volunteers working in rural and urban departments with national agencies, municipal governments, and private organizations in the fields of agriculture, national resource organization of agriculture, natural resource management, integrated education, micro-enterprise, small business development, tourism development, and water sanitation projects.

Almost two decades passed before trouble arose once again. In July 2007 the Assistant Regional Security Advisor, Vincent Cooper, of the U.S. embassy, addressed a group of 30 Peace Corps volunteers and requested that they report information regarding the names and locations of any Cuban nations they encountered in the field. In November of that year Fulbright scholar John Alexander van Shaick was asked to provide similar reports regarding Venezuelan and Cuban nationals. Both stories came to light in March 2008 and by September the Peace Corps had withdrawn their volunteers due to “growing instability” and a recent violent uprising.

September 11, 2008: 30 people were killed in the remote department of Pando in an uprising running counter to Evo Morales’ plan to redistribute wealth. As Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Morales has pledged to redistribute wealth from the gas-rich eastern lowlands to the poorer highlands – a pledge the United States has a political interest in opposing.

Since Morales’ electoral victory in September 2005, USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) documents show official U.S. support being given to small fledgling governments formed in the gas-rich eastern lowland departments. While the United States denies any direct involvement in Bolivian politics, a declassified message from the U.S. embassy in Bolivia to Washington states:

“A planned USAID political party reform project aims at implementing an existing Bolivian law that would…over the long run, help build moderate, pro-democracy political parties that can serve as a counterweight to the radical MAS or its successors.”

MAS, translated into English, stands for Movement Towards Socialism – a political party led by President Morales.

Following the violent unrest in September 2008, Morales declared martial law, accused the United States of inciting violence in Bolivia, and expelled the U.S. ambassador from the country; the United States followed suit by expelling the Bolivian ambassador. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez demonstrated solidarity with Bolivia by also expelling its U.S. ambassador and again the United States responded by removing its Venezuelan ambassador.

Not until November 7^th, 2011 did Bolivia and the U.S. agree to restore diplomatic ties by exchanging ambassadors once again. Bolivia did, however, refuse to allow American DEA agents to return. Morales also stands by his initial characterization of ambassador Philip Goldberg as a conspirator against his government.

Despite this recent restoration of diplomatic ties, the Peace Corps has no plans to return. Aimee Cooper, current Desk Officer of the Inter-America and Pacific Region, writes in an email, “Due to budget constraints, Peace Corps Bolivia officially closed on October 14, 2011; three years after Volunteers were evacuated.  There are no current plans to reopen the post.”

Cumulatively the Peace Corps served in Bolivia for 27 years over five decades. Projects undertaken by volunteers spanned both rural and urban environments and facilitated change on a local and national level. While unfortunate, their decision to withdraw volunteers, in both 1971 and 2008, is consistent with one of the Peace Corps’ directives to present a positive image of Americans to indigenous populations receiving help.

For the Peace Corps to be involved with an international scandal of any magnitude is unacceptable and incredibly detrimental to their reputation. Petty political maneuvering by the Bush administration and the inappropriate behavior exhibited by certain U.S. embassy officials resulted in Bolivia’s loss of a major source of large-scale foreign aid.

But there is always hope. Today, a wide variety of international aid programs are underway in Bolivia; from small non-profit teams like AVOC to larger organizations such as Doctors Without Borders, help is on the way.

Saludos,`

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I found the Leather Man through Rodolfo, an alarmingly obese twenty-six year old. Rodolfo was raised in and now works for the orphanage I’ve come to Bolivia to support, La Aldea de los Niños. “I am always a friend to America.” Rodolfo knows the drill. Somewhere along the line someone gave these Bolivians the impression that all Americans are habitually loose with their money. To be fair, Rodolfo’s “guided tour” was excellent, despite his unfortunate infatuation with Abba and my contraction of a temporarily crippling disease.

Bolivia, as it turns out, is infested with Dengue Fever – a disease I hadn’t encountered in prior trips but would catch in 2011 on each of three visits to San Jose. Dengue is a vicious, merciless disease sometimes known as break-bone fever. You can catch it from one mosquito bite – mosquitos which, once infected, act as lifelong carriers without suffering any ill effects – and if it gets bad enough, the disease will kill you.

I suffered my third bout of Dengue Fever shortly after leaving San Jose and arriving back in the U.S. While I sat in the emergency room at Johns Hopkins, confounding doctors with no experience treating such a tropical disease, an American friend and non-profit intern in Bolivia temporarily lost her eyesight – her Dengue strain presenting with different, more horrifying symptoms than mine – and was held in a Bolivian ICU for over a week.

A great many Bolivians are somewhat resistant to the milder forms of Dengue (there are four types); Rodolfo is among them. From the moment we stepped off the road to the moment we emerged into the Leather Man’s clearing, swarms of mosquitos attacked Rodolfo as if he was stuffed with big bait. After forty-five minutes of swearing, swatting, and Swedish pop music, our single track path ends to reveal a wide clearing encircled by a meet post-and-rail fence. The compound is littered with old tires and scraps of leather.

The Leather Man lives and works quite removed from typical rural Bolivian society, which while poor, still enjoys the more necessary of modern luxuries: water, electricity, propane stoves, even televisions sometimes. He lives without electricity or running water in mud huts with tile and sheet-metal roofs: one hut for working, one for living. A healthy flock of chickens and assorted other birds litter his sparse property. Wholly off the grid, this property sits back from the road, accessible by a two mile mosquito gauntlet. Rodolfo is sadly out of running shape, so we walk. Slowly. He brought a portable speaker to blast music through the clammy forest, which would be of interest if only he had any music besides Abba.

Outside the mud-hut one of the Leather Man’s four brothers sits absentmindedly in a wooden chair upholstered with a thick leather seat – a chair fit for any upper class American home and yet not out of place here. His brother’s face communicates an extreme age: his right eye foggy and reddish and useless, his head in constant motion to keep his surroundings focused in his left eye. His pants are several sizes too big in the waist and quite baggy in the legs, held up by a beautifully crafted leather belt matching his boots.

For more than thirty years the Leather Man has been at his trade – ever since he finished his obligatory year in the Bolivian military. Now he survives off business garnered by his reputation for quality work. Boots, sandals, belts, saddles, seat cushions, and satchel-bags hang, in various stages of completion, around his workspace. His seven remaining children have likewise learned the leather trade, though only one continues to work with him. Despite their extreme poverty, the Leather Man’s children – that is, the ones who survived their childhood – have grown to lead [relatively] successful lives. Four have a proper education; two now live in Santa Cruz where the cost of living is significantly higher than in San Jose. The average life expectancy for a Bolivian is only 66 years, which doesn’t give the Leather Man or his brother much more time. Nevertheless, he has no complaints. With the exception of the occasional Gringo brought to him by Rodolfo, the Leather Man and his family have no standard against which to compare his quality of life, and so, he lives happily.

The clothes on the line behind his workshop are too fashionable to belong to him or his wife. Her day-job, in addition to stoking the wood-fire stove used to heat water and cook food, is washing clothes. “My wife and I work from home; everything we have is here.” The Leather Man, his wife, and his brother get by on an astonishingly meager budget.

For 120 Bolivianos – about seventeen dollars – I bought a custom pair of leather sandals with rubber soles cut directly from a tire – the brand of which is left in all of my footsteps – and a carefully woven belt, imprinted with my initials. After my second bout of Dengue and subsequent weight loss neither the sandals nor the belt fit properly so I returned to have them adjusted. Unfortunately it was my return for alterations that led to my third Dengue ravaging. After nearly ninety minutes of work I paid just ten Bolivianos, or about one Euro.

“Cheap, no?” Rodolfo – Aldea son, new friend, and self-proclaimed San Jose guide – assures me that a better deal cannot be found. “You’re a gringo, everything should be more expensive for you, but he lives very simply, he needs almost nothing, and so he charges you fairly.”

“Come on my friend” he coaxes in English, followed by the other words in his English vocabulary, “Shit-fucker!” The mosquitos have finally caught up to us. He flicks a switch on the portable speaker he carried through the forest with us and again my ears are accosted with Abba’s “Momma Mia” soundtrack, pulsing as we work our way again through the humid, insect infested forest, bound for the village.

Aaron S. Gilbert

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You could spend a lifetime working to alleviate American suffering and die before finishing. With all this suffering at home, how can some Americans devote their efforts to suffering people abroad through humanitarian projects that take money from American pockets and distribute it to people of another race in another country? Because…

Some international suffering is the direct result of arrogant American social and economic politics forced on independent nations.

The last two Bolivian generations have watched American intervention in Bolivia – often under the auspices of aid – create civil unrest, violence, and poverty. Much of the recent socio-political violence in Bolivia has come as the result of direct and indirect American imperialism. Through institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) American corporations like Bechtel have been trying to squeeze money from South America’s poorest country by strong-arming the typically penniless, landless, and/or defenseless Bolivians.

In 1996, for example, the World Bank – heavily influenced by the United States – forced the third-world nation of Bolivia to privatize water resources, giving international corporations priority water over local consumption. The privatization contract went to an enormous multinational American-founded corporation. Where water previously came from the Earth – sometimes for free – Cochabambinos were billed up to $20 a month, between a third and a quarter of the average Bolivian monthly wages.

More recently the U.S. has imposed its ‘War on Drugs’ on Bolivia – attempting to reduce stateside cocaine consumption by militarizing coca fields in Bolivia. Coca farmers have been jailed, tortured, and stripped of their livelihoods, but with no recognizable effects on cocaine availability on American streets. Despite having published research to this effect, the U.S. government refuses to acknowledge the futility of their efforts in eradicating a traditional and cultural icon like the coca leaf.

What follows is a quick recount of indirect and direct American imperialism on Bolivia. With such overwhelming evidence of pompous American initiatives resulting in the suffering of a foreign population, how can Americans expect to hold their heads high on the world stage? Can we be anything more than embarrassed? Well, yes. We can be apologetic, we can be productive.

I. Cochabamba’s Water War

In 1996 the World Bank threatened to withhold $600 million in debt relief if the Bolivian government refused to privatize the water in Cochabamba, a Bolivian city with roughly half a million residents in 1999.

As its largest shareholder, the United States stands as the most influential World Bank member – a fact that came into the limelight in 2007 when then World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz was exposed for violating the bank’s ethical rules but was supported vehemently by the George W. Bush administrationⁱ.

The government folded to WB pressure in 1999 and gave the water privatization contract to Aguas del Tunari, a subsidiary of the American Bechtel Corporation. Bechtel, founded by Warren Bechtel in 1898 to build railroads using Chinese prison laborers, is the world’s largest construction company with almost 20,000 projects on six continents in the mining, oil, air and rail transportation, defense, and aerospace industries. Today, Bechtel holds re-construction contracts in Iraq, reaping billions of dollars where decades of U.S. bombing has destroyed the infrastructure.

Longtime CEO Stephen Bechtel is famously quoted, “We’re more about making money than making things.” When Bechtel sent Agua del Tunari into Bolivia they negotiated a forty year contract with guaranteed annual profits of sixteen percent.

Around this same time in 1999 Water Law 2029 was enacted, giving priority water supply to international mining and agricultural companies rather than to the citizens of Cochabamba, known as Cochabambinos.

While the public water supply in Cochabamba prior to 1999 serviced only 60 percent of the population Aguas del Tunari also gained control of private water sources – wells financed and built by small communities without any aid from the Bolivian government. Now even Cochabambinos without indoor plumbing or access to public water sources were receiving water bills sometimes as high as $20 a month – a one-thousand percent increase – for water resources previously owned and operated privately and cheaply. Even families whose main water source was rainwater collected in gutters and barrels received water billsⁱⁱ. A ‘Water War’ raged in Cochabamba for the next five years. American involvement in this affair is hardly scant.

II. IMF Involvement

Unfortunately for Bolivia, the United States not only has it’s hands in the World Bank, but in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as well. The U.S. holds more clout – roughly 17 percent – with the IMF than any other country in the world. And even though the IMF deeply affects the world’s most impoverished nations – such as Bolivia – it has always held a European president, leaving those affected by its policies powerless to change them. The Argentinian banking system crash, which turned one of the world’s richest nations into one of its poorest nearly overnight, can be directly traced back to the IMF.

A Bolivian governmental survey reported in 2003 that the quality of life for citizens in Bolivia was worse than five years before in 1997. In this time the national budget deficit rose from 3.3 percent to 8.7 percent of the national income. Unemployment skyrocketed, wages plummeted; between 1998 and 2002 the number of Bolivians without electricity went from 2.3 million to 3.1 millionⁱⁱⁱ. The country was in a state of disrepair. It was vulnerable, it was desperate. It was time to call the IMF.

In a naive attempt to correct the budget deficit, the IMF pressured the Bolivian government to raise income taxes – a move that doomed Bolivia to a bloody civil war. In order to receive a vitally necessary loan from the IMF, the Bolivian government agreed to lower the deficit from 8.7 percent to 5.5 percent per the IMF’s instruction and a 12.5 percent income tax increase was levied against the lowest earning portion of the country. At the same time however, governmental salaries were increased – and when the national police force received no such raise, they took to the streets.

When the police force protested, they did it with complete unity; the command to strike came from the high ranks. The Bolivian military was called to respond. Benjamin Dangl details Bolivia’s history of resource wars and social movements in The Price of Fire (AK Press 2007); he quotes police Colonel Jose Villarroel of the police protests in 2003: “’The army used high caliber weapons…transporting guns, tear gas, and ammunition in ambulances. They were decidedly out to kill people.’” Of course IMF officials retreated from Bolivia when the violence started, and immediately denied involvement in the policies leading up to the riots, per apparent corporate policy.

III. Coca

The coca leaf is a traditional Latin American plant used to staunch hunger, treat stomach illnesses, increase oxygen flow to the brain at high altitudes, and combat fatigue during long toiling days under the hot Bolivian sun. The plant is comprised of almost 1 percent usable cocaine-derivative. Chemically coca is so far from cocaine that it is nearly impossible to abuse the coca leaf in its natural form. Varieties of the plant can be found in many Latin American countries, though for the most part only plants found in Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia contain the right alkaloids necessary for cocaine production^iv.

In an effort to stem the tide of cocaine to American streets, the U.S. War on Drugs has militarized coca producing regions of Latin America, including Bolivian departments such as the Chapare and the Yungas, regions heavily populated with coca farms. The moniker “War on Drugs” is not simply a name, for the U.S. is truly waging a war, killing farmers and burning crops.

Unfortunately, coca farmers – known as cocaleros – in no way resemble the dangerous cartels involved in cocaine production and trafficking. What illicit drug production does occur in Bolivia occurs in secret – often on abandoned lands – far from coca fields. Coca and cocaine comprise two independent industries: cocaleros receive no benefits from cocaine or cocaine-paste production^v.

In 1998 U.S. President Bill Clinton pressured Bolivian President Hugo Banzer to create a program and an armed force specifically designed for the eradication of coca cultivation. While some cocaleros may have qualified for compensation for their destroyed livelihoods in the beginning, over the course of several bloody years of increasing neglect for human rights, these compensation opportunities vanished.

Many of the soldiers involved in these brutal eradication campaigns – who, it should be noted, chew coca during their excursions in order to fight fatigue and limit fear – were trained in the United States at Fort Benning, Georgia at the School of the Americas. Here an average of 155 Bolivian soldiers a year, between the years of 1967 and 1979, were instructed in counter-insurgency, jungle warfare, and torturous interrogation techniques.

Today coca leaves are abundantly and cheaply available throughout Bolivia. In most of the country coca tea is more prevalent than coffee. The U.S. still refuses to acknowledge the futility of their eradication efforts, despite having conducted and published research more or less positing that coca is to cocaine what coffee beans are to methamphetamines.

Just as American jails are full of victims of the U.S. War on Drugs – some prisoners serving life sentences for third strike drug possession – Bolivian prisons are full of farmers and social leaders accused of contributing to another nations drug problem. Also worth noting is the fact that the American government has admitted to knowing that what cocaine is produced in Bolivia is shipped to Europe, and thus American anti-drug efforts in Bolivia have had absolutely no effect on the quantity of cocaine permeating American streets.

Righting some Wrongs

What can we do besides bury our heads in the sand? Well, don’t forget that right now there are scores of Americans abroad, working to aid suffering people.

Today the Peace Corps alone has over 8,000 volunteers working in 77 countries – roughly 90 percent of which have undergraduate degrees. Over the last fifty years the Peace Corps has sent over 200,000 volunteers to 139 countries with the explicit goal of helping to promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served, among others.

In addition to these Peace Corps volunteers, private agencies nationwide have been organizing private humanitarian missions for years. Now, more and more young Americans are joining the effort, volunteering and working abroad through High School and College-level international secular and non-secular programs.

There is an international workforce of Americans donating their time and resources to righting some of the wrongs inflicted on the world – not just the overt ones, but the subtle and indirect examples as well.

In 2006 Bolivian orphans, children of La Aldea de Niños Padre Alfredo – lacking frequent access to news, not to mention the attention span to absorb foreign policy segments – knew enough of our goings on to poke fun at our country and then-president George W. Bush. At that same time I met several groups of American travelers who had sewn Canadian flags on their packs when backpacking abroad: traveling was easier as a Canadian than as an American.

International suffering may not always been in your face, like American suffering, but in many cases it trumps the extent of our suffering. Times are tough all over, it’s time to think less like an American and more like an internationalist.

Aaron S. Gilbert

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The second group of boys I scolded loudly from my window because really, couldn’t they see why it was a bad idea – that they were littering sharp rocks and glass shards around the perimeter of their soccer field?

Well, maybe they can’t see why it’s a bad idea. The third set of boys came along almost immediately – at first they threw rocks into some low-spots in the field, where rainwater has formed some rather deep puddles, but it didn’t take long for them to find the windows. Come to think of it, it’s a miracle those windows have lasted this long.

The point is, these children spend the vast majority of their lives unsupervised. They live in an environment where adults are as blind to environmental hygiene as infants. They have no concept of a shared world, no concept of the consequences their actions bring. You might think their behavior is selfish, that they can only be troubled to care about what effects them directly, and you might be right. But the bigger problem is ignorance.

I cannot speak for the upbringing of the rest of the country, but in the Aldeas Padre Alfredo there is little or no guidance for rights and wrongs beyond abstinence and sobriety. They have no parents to scold them for hitting or biting in anger, they have no one to say “Clean up after yourself.” Their lives are almost completely devoid of long-term moral or ethical direction.

Most volunteers succumb to TP at some point during their stay in Bolivia. It’s a terrible condition punctuated by irritability and depression. There is a simple enough cure available in most civilized countries but is often utterly impossible to find here in Bolivia. Indeed, Trash Phobia is a silent killer of souls.

My first bout with TP came not long after arriving in Bolivia for the first time in 2006. Everywhere I looked I found trash – on the sidewalks, in the street, in the park, in the classrooms – I found heaping piles of garbage lining the Aldea walls and glass shards littering the soccer field. Santa Cruz does employ a trash collection service though we rarely need it: garbage is often set on fire and burns unsupervised into the early morning hours.

TP strikes you in three stages. First is the silent stage – no matter what feelings you had towards trash before Bolivia, you will soon grow to see in even the smallest piece of litter a grand metaphor of irresponsibility. You might spend some time cleaning, perhaps mention your sour feelings in passing conversation.

Second, you start vocalizing your displeasure: “Why am I trying to help people who won’t even try to help themselves?” You’ll start reprimanding children for littering, you’ll start reprimanding adults for setting a bad example, you’ll fight the irresistible urge to return littered garbage to motorists and even policemen.

Third, your concerns slip away and you fall into a comfortable numbness – surely a feeling that each Bolivian shares – and gradually learn to ignore the problem. You’ve decided that among all the problems facing the country, trash is probably the least dangerous. More importantly you’ve realized that most Bolivians just plain don’t know any better; some are merely selfish, sure, but for the most part they just don’t see why not.

There is a feud now between two of the four boys outside my window. It would seem that a trivial dispute has turned into something of a rock war. These skirmishes do not typically last long, though they are surprisingly violent when compared to the behavior of American children. Without parental guidance the children often solve problems – and successfully – through physical or verbal abuse.

That being said, I have yet to see evidence of serious injury – mental or physical and I have yet to see a grudge held between children for more than an hour. These are tough kids; these are the children of Sisyphus found thrown by the wayside, dragged through dirt and poverty; these are children who rarely stop smiling.

Saludos,

Aaron S. Gilbert

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At maximum theoretical capacity (theoretical because the administration also seems unable to pinpont the exact number of beds) the Aldea can handle 320 niños (children), though at the moment only a combined 296 niños reside in Aldeas Padre Alfredo. In addition, the Aldea provides for 87 jovenes (adolescents) and over 30 tías (responsible for 10 or more children each) in 40 casas (houses) – 11 in Santa Cruz and 21 in San Jose.

In an average month, the Aldea’s total operation costs are $70,000 (US) – about half of which is spent directly on the children. Each day Monday through Friday each child costs the Aldea 10 Bolivianos (Bs.), and 30 Bs. for weekend days, thus the weekly cost of each child is 110 Bs. or $15.71 and 5,720 Bs. or $817 a year. Every three to four months roughly 200 Bs. or $28.57 is spent on each child for clothes; and each child is given 250 Bs. or $35.71 a year for school supplies. Now each child costs 6,770 Bs. or $916.14 per year.

Fifteen or twenty former Aldea children now collect Aldea paychecks; some work in one of the two carpinterias (workshops).

In one year the Aldea is likely to spend $840,000 or 5,880,000 Bs., the bulk of which comes from European donations and benefactors. For each child living at the Aldea, the Government, kicks in 200 Bs. a year or $0.08 a day – but only for the first six years – thus the Bolivian Government contributes 1200 Bs. or $171.43 over six years for each child.

Each Aldea is punctuated with two swingsets, a pair of parallel bars, one set of monkey bars and two slides; also one multipurpose coliseo (indoor gym) and one multipurpose cancha (field/court) with soccer goals, basketball nets, and painted lines for volleyball. At any given time each Aldea typically has available one soccer ball, one volleyball, and one basketball, all of varying qualities; for the most part any deflated ball will serve as a sufficient replacement for a soccer ball.

The number of children who fall ill or become injured is not clear, though neither is a serious problem in either Aldea. Every child is now vaccinated with the available major vaccinations. Most illnesses are the result of malnutrition experienced before arriving at the Aldea. While no child goes hungry, most children receive little or no fruit in their diet, and only [over]cooked vegetables, but children brave enough to visit the volunteer’s apartment are each given a piece of fruit and a cup of tea.

Saludos,

Aaron S. Gilbert

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I was introduced to Nachin through a common friend and co-worker, Joselito, whose polio has robbed him of the use of his legs. Joselito, meaning “little Joselo”, is actually somewhat of a nickname earned for him by his stunted growth. Thirty-six years old, Joselito has rigid leg braces that allow him to “walk” by planting his crutches and swinging his legs through. Plant, swing. Plant, swing. Plant, swing…forever.

Abandoned as a child, Joselito grew up in the same orphanage he now works. His childhood was spent in San Jose, where Nachin made a big influence on his life. “He was my father when I needed one,” Joselito says. Later, after we had left Nachin’s house, Joselito wandered San Jose alone for some time – Nachin was in worse shape than he’d ever seen.

Nachin spends much of his day in an outdoor courtyard surrounded by the walls of his home or on the street just outside. Outdoor living space is not uncommon in parts of Bolivia, where the temperature never falls dangerously low. Nachin’s courtyard opens directly onto the street, each room accessible only through the open, uncovered space – an interesting layout, but inconvenient for privacy.

Nachin’s adopted son, Luis, arrives with a cold bottle of Coca Cola and three glasses. For a moment they share a gaze, Nachin’s eyes wide with appreciation and Luis’ the pinnacle of nonchalance. The boy lifts one of Nachin’s massive hands to the table, his fingers curled into tight, useless, balls, and places it next to the glass. Occasionally a finger jerks and shakes, unnoticed and unfelt by Nachin.

I never met Luis’ sister, though while I sat with Nachin, gentlemen paraded in and out of her room on the other side of the courtyard, curtains closed and door locked, only to emerge a short time later, smoking, sweating, and red-faced. Happening just outside Nachin’s peripheral vision, this traffic went entirely unnoticed by him, though Luis briefly held a look of embarrassment after the third man arrived only a moment after the second left.

Now Nachin slumps forward over the table, demonstrating a sad lack of bodily control. Without the use of his hands, he requires help lifting and holding the cup to his mouth and yet drinks almost as gracefully as he smokes. Despite this grace, every spoken word seems to be an immense undertaking; he appears, at times, to shake the words out – but speaks almost without pause for hours.

He drove a commercial truck and, “as kids will do,” drank too much when he was younger. Once, a doctor told him that his symptoms were the result of his drinking, and that if he stopped the illness might just go away. He recounts lurid tales of drugs and women, and occasional family anecdotes. In short, Nachin is a man who has almost never felt a single pang of loneliness.

As a younger man, Nachin fell in love with a woman just before leaving Bolivia to travel Chile. Before he returned, however, the woman was killed in a car accident. “Don’t stop until you’re forty-five” he coaxes, “you’ll only get those years once. Then you can relax.”

One night his friends ran out on their tab at a brothel, leaving penniless Nachin with the bill. What did he do? Well, he stayed the next night too, of course! He roars with laughter and his head rolls back a bit as he searches our faces to see if his story has been sufficiently entertaining.

Divorced, Nachin lives with Luis, and Luis’ mother; he supports them, still owning the commercial truck. “Luis is a good boy,” he says, “but he’s not motivated. He doesn’t try in school, he isn’t that smart, but he isn’t stupid.” Regardless, the boy has smiled without rest, thoughtfully picking leaves out of Nachin’s gray hair, lifting his soda glass and holding cigarettes to his mouth.

After three hours of listening to stories of the fast life told so slowly, we’ve run out of time, the overnight train to Santa Cruz leaves in an hour. “You’ve made a friend in San Jose” he sputters out as I stand, “just tell someone you’re looking for Nachin and they’ll bring you here.”

The train station is busy for two in the morning; motorcycle taxis line up on the street next to a man selling CD’s from a giant bicycle-mounted rack. Two car batteries power a loud crackling speaker tied to the luggage rack above the back wheel. Reggaeton and Spanish rap songs thunder through the station.

Inside, weary travelers wait for the train in their sleep. Amerindian women in bowler hats unwrap their blanket-packs and sleep on the station floor while wrinkled and disheveled men slouch on the benches.

A clattering bell, pulled straight from an old western movie, announces the arrival of the train. Onboard, only the conductor stirs, quietly lifting baggage into the cars and directing confused ticket-holders in a hushed tone. Each car sleeps silently as we slide into the night, rocking back and forth – sometimes violently – bound for Santa Cruz.

Aaron S. Gilbert

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The field was speckled with children playing in small groups, sharing items like a bicycle, marbles, and my iPod. My fuming was interrupted at once by a joyous – though awkward – giggle turned howl from a delightfully cheerful though quite quiet girl – a mute, both deaf and unwilling to speak. Her brakeless, single-speed bike had gone out of control with her teetering on the edge of the seat. She bounced over a few roofing tiles and crash landed into the sand pile next to me. She rolled over, laughing hysterically – the first I’d her from her since arriving a month ago.

Through an elaborate but not overly complicated series of hand gestures she learned that I had bought my hammock in the United States and that the mysterious tablet I was glued to was [astonishingly] only for books and would not display or take photos or videos. Upon the arrival of the welders she made ready to leave and – much to my pleasure – attempted to say “Ciao”.

Not far from the front gate of the Aldea sits a small welding shop, its doors perpetually open to accommodate the long stock stored half indoors and half out. We should have trusted our guts upon seeing the state of the shop but the Aldea director had brought us, and assured us that these were their go-to welders. In fact, these welders are currently welding another project in the Gaurderia (Kindergarten).

Their welds were ugly, unclean, and without penetration; some persistent nagging brought the quality of some welds to an acceptable level. Worse, they were lazy. Rather than rolling the welder fifteen feet over the grass to weld on a level cement floor, they opted to weld in the dirt, creating ground-extensions by tacking metal rods together.

Despite frequent reminders, they failed to attach the parallel bar legs square or on the same plane; in fact, they failed to bring common tools like a square, string-line, level, hammer, marker, or tape measure. They skipped their third day of work completely, and on this forth day I waited only to stop them from prepping the job site – which includes stretching an extension cord of two independent thin-guage electrical wires taped together over the wall and directly into a service box on the telephone pole – before I could fire them.

In their place we have hired another local welder – a man with his own machine and without a dependable job. When we first met him he looked the part of a working man: filthy, greasy, and torn clothes, sun-burnt hands and forearms, and a clementine sized ball of coca in his right cheek. But by the time he had arrived at the Aldea to take a look at the project he had changed into clean jeans, sneakers, and a pressed, button-up, turquoise long sleeve shirt. In stark contrast with his predecessors he listened attentively and he repeated everything to confirm that he understood correctly. He still hard-wired the welder into the telephone pole, but at least he had confidence.

Saludos,

Aaron S. Gilbert

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Jorge drives a four-door Toyota shortbed 2×4 pickup, adults in the cab, kids in the back – standing room only. Bolivian over-the-road drivers – cheeks packed with coca leaves – roar past on either side, sometimes mounting the curb just to stay ahead.

Leaving the pavement and entering the countryside we find that where road should be now stands a multitude of mini-lakes – rain has been falling for two days. Jorge plows through the first mud-pit and gets bogged down in the next but it’s nothing a small army of adolescents can’t push him through; we’re underway in a few minutes.

Pablo follows closely in our Coaster, at times drifting around corners like a rally car driver…in a bus. With such a heavy load the micro-bus tires keep traction in the deep mud, though sometimes pushing forward in a silly sideways fashion as if the bus were really fifteen feet wide and only six feet long. Just over an hour of travel and we reach El Campo: the country.

Despite their questionable (read: terrible) behavior, the boys have earned a one-night, two-day respite from the brick and barbed wire residence. For almost two weeks I’ve watched and listened as the boys dragged machete blades across pavement as if they lived in a world with no consequences; tossing soda bottles at pet puppies and carrying them away by one leg as they squeal not unlike pigs; carelessly littering the sandwich bags and straws that are the “Bolivian Juice Box”.

The Aldea de los Ninos Padre Alfredo organization is quite large, operating the children’s village in Santa Cruz with two off-site residences (where I am currently staying), a much larger village in San Jose, and a country farm an hour from Santa Cruz.

In the country the boys really come together as a family. In the residence they are confined – fairly – to the compound with few chances to leave. I say fairly because the Bolivian streets are really no place for children, despite the numerous intersection jugglers and roaming shoe shine kids.

Nonetheless, life in the residence is not unlike jail, but perhaps with more rec time. In the country, however, there is space to play, there is grass, there are two dozen or so pigs, and there is a pool, algae green as it may be – in the country kids can be kids. Some of the boys are lucky enough to have come from San Jose, which I’m told is a lot like the farm in the country – though perhaps that only makes life in Santa Cruz that much more difficult.

So what did we learn from one night in the country? Kids need to be kids, kids need space, kids need activities. Of course there isn’t much of an alternative; the Aldea is operating safely and presumably with the children’s interests close to heart. But there is hope. Using money generously donated by stateside friends and family, we have constructed a permanent recreation area for the kids in the Santa Cruz.

On the base level this means more activities and thus more exhausted and less agitated kids. Pushing deeper this means an increased self-awareness, a sense of personal responsibility, and an outlet for frustration and competition.

Saludos,

Aaron S. Gilbert

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“You’ll notice that the ratio of teaching to work accomplished is much better in med school or truck driver’s school, because these involve skills that can be taught.”

Of course you can teach the alphabet and in a direct fashion literally teach a person how to write – but what they write and its quality, can you teach that?

The most noted potential flaw in the instruction of successful creative writing is the notion that one or more unpublished authors can instruct another unpublished author how to get published. From an algebraic position this equation does not fit, and yet it appears over and over in workshops around the country. On workshops Ventura has an opinion:

“Your classmates don’t know any more than you; their comments will be mere opinions, backed by scant knowledge and experience – but they have the power to hurt you…With any writing teacher of any kind, hunt out what they’ve written. If their work doesn’t speak to you, you needn’t take too seriously what they say about your stuff.”

Sure, workshops are susceptible to negativity – both deserved and undeserved – and are potentially filled with writers of a lesser caliber. But workshops serve as the most direct source of feedback from a potentially diverse audience and are most successful when participants learn to cater their material to the workshop audience, at least to some extent.

And workshops work, according to The New Yorker. But, in lieu of writing workshops, Charlie Brooker from The Guardian offers this simple advice: get a deadline. Pressure, it seems, separates the strong from the weak in the writing community.

In January 2010, The Times writer, Nicola Woolcock, reported that some in the writing industry worry that documented education may become a prerequisite for publication – a fear fueled by statistics that show specially educated writers are infiltrating top genre lists across the board.

This would surely be of little consequence except that the validity of learning the art of creative writing has always been a matter of dispute.

Michael Ventura claims that “writing is something you do alone in a room,” but this is not to say it is something you do without pressure. Rooms are inherently filled with your distractions – both inspirational and non – and will lend themselves, occasionally, to wasting time. The willingness to stay in that room – distractions and all – is the mark of a writer, and to Ventura, is unteachable.

There lies a distinction between writing as a day job and writing on the side – a line drawn by education. Writing as a line of work involves more passion that teachers can give away, while writing on the side will be forever fueled by the ebb and flow of workshop critiques.

Aaron S. Gilbert

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